


The Witching Hour

by Lady_Romana



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/M, Here we go!, also it's not spooky at all, count olaf/esmé squalor - Freeform, idk why it looks so misleading, it's just an emotional dump i guess?, with some mentions of kitlaf but bleh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 06:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14395926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Romana/pseuds/Lady_Romana
Summary: The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.- Roald Dahl.





	The Witching Hour

They say night time is the most terrifying time of all. They say that after midnight comes the witching hour. They say it lasts from midnight to three. As a child your fears are literal. You fear that there will be monsters under your bed, witches inside your closet, ghosts causing that creak in the staircase. You fear they all linger there, waiting. _Tick, tock, tick tock_. You fear that as the hour strikes they’ll come out and that if you’re still awake they’ll take you, so you press your eyes well closed.

As you get older, you still hear that _tick tock_. But you’re not afraid of anyone lurking, or of anything in your closet. It’s the _tick tock_ that keeps you up. You feel time slipping by, and that terrifies you the most. Suddenly you’re all grown, and the lurking creatures return. Only the ghosts aren’t ancient and pale. They’re fresh, and transparent. They might even be alive. They’re memories. And they’re not causing the creak in the staircase, and you don’t think there is anyone in the closet. No. It’s the things stored in there. Secrets. Secrets you’re aching to know, or secrets you never want anyone to find.

No matter how old you are, or what day it is, or if you’re awake or asleep, witching hour always comes.

And to his wretched house witching hour came, as it did every night. When it struck, it clashed with notes from the downstairs piano, and a dimly lit staircase. Perhaps it was the crash of both the keynote and the _tock_ that woke her, but Esmé caught herself breathless and with her eyes wide open. She couldn’t remember what she had been dreaming about, or if she had been dreaming at all, but she knew she was now far too annoyed to possibly go back to sleep. She turned to the rusty clock by the bedside. _Two forty-eight_ , well past midnight. Too annoyed or too _haunted_.

For her feeling haunted felt _prickly_. Like a deeply buried splinter. So thin at first you don’t quite think there’s anything wrong. You shake your hand to shoo the feeling away, but it punctures and pinches. You have to look agonizingly close to find it, and struggle endlessly to pick it away. She rolled around and shut her eyes, a shake. But the piano downstairs punctured, and the empty space next to her pinched. Like you would tell yourself a splinter is just a twitch, she told herself what annoyed her was the noise. Really. If he wanted to not sleep at all and let those bags under his eyes double in size each day, that was fine by her. His decision. They weren’t totally _unflattering_. —But did he have to be so **loud** about being awake? He wasn’t even practicing an _in_ piece. He was playing the equivalent of gibberish.

And that was the true splinter, wasn’t it? She would never dig deep enough to remove it, but she felt it there. Buzzing and poking through her nerves _. Rubbish, gibberish_. Gibberish that if turned from music to words wouldn’t say her name. It would say _hers_. Regardless of the years, and the anger, and everything she did, and everything he did, and everything they did, it would always be _hers_.

To push the thought away, she also pushed the covers and sat up. He wouldn’t be ruining her not-at-all-needed-but-always-much-wanted beauty sleep. With a huff, she walked to the wooden door and SLAMMED! it shut. CRASH! Went an empty gin bottle lingering by it, which she didn’t take notice of before.

And so came witching hour for him. He had put himself to bed at eleven, and had been sitting in the studio since eleven twenty-five. He didn’t even know what time it was, but he knew with the THUD and the CRASH the witching had begun.

 It was one of the best things about her, truly. How terrifying she was. Not that he would believe in witches if one turned him into a frog on the spot, but he liked the thought of one. Of a certain _power_. And he liked the look of her bony hands and her long fingernails. And the way she smelled witchy, of something oddly pleasant that he could never point out. Still, everyone knows it’s idiotic to mess with a witch during witching hours, and she was similar enough.

“You’re up?” he called. Haunted felt different for him, like an apparition. A presence that lingers, making you dizzy. His head throbbed, and he knew it would be worse when the witching hour came to an end. Waiting for her response, he shut his eyes. _There’s still enough whiskey for breakfast coffee. That should do._

“Not for long, _darling_. Just opened the window to get some air in, you **know** how sensitive I am to _suffocating_ and how **out** it is to sleep with less than three duvets this season and a gush of wind shut the door. _Did I interrupt_?” she replied. High pitched. Sharp. And very much awake. She may not have sounded chilling, but she sure had sounded _witchy_.

Most nights he minded his business and she minded hers. It worked. She left stains of clay or cream or whatever the hell that was on the pillow and he didn’t care, just like she didn’t care that next time she came around all he’d done was flip them around.  That didn’t mean they shared the room for no reason, and he knew how to take her hint.

“No. Doesn’t matter. I’ll be right up” he mumbled, hopefully loud enough for her to hear. He lowered the piano lid, and with it he shut the ghosts that followed him. The ghosts of the people he’d once shared the house with, when it’d been a mansion. The ghost of someone who was still alive, but whom he would never share it with. In fact, he was only too mad at himself he’d let as much as her ghost in. Day and night he shut her out, only his head still throbbed and it was harder and harder to not let her slip. Her and everyone else she brought along.

He squeezed his eyes and tried his best to focus when he opened them, tumbling upstairs as quickly as possible. When he made it to the bedroom he had to squeeze his eyes and open them wider, no to seem so dizzy and swamped by what had haunted him. Even though she had her back turned on him, and she sat by the very edge of the bed, he decided to walk his most proficient steps towards his own side and sit best he could, even if he ended up collapsing on it. She huffed, and had he been in a better mood he would have taken that hint too. Given her the good argument she was craving (hadn’t had one of those in a while. Making up was always fun), but instead he rolled closer to the middle and pressed his forehead with one hand, opening up his other arm to her.

She turned and huff again, hesitant. Her nose lingered a little longer in the air, stiffened and disapproving, but after one more quick glance she gave in. She also settled in the middle of the bed, her head by his chest. For a few seconds they were ominously silent, very well aware of everything lurking outside the window, inside the closet, and the ghosts roaming inside.

“Sleep well, my love” he broke the silence, slightly slurred. He shifted around, but kept his arm in place. “You too, and _longer_.  No offense darling but those circles under your eyes are turning hideously gigantic, and that is _never_ in” she stated as firmly and full of conviction as if it were midday and not midnight. Three of clock, precisely. “They’re part of my charm” he chuckled softly. “Never is never. The _eyebrow_ is a part of your charm” she continued, a little softer too. “You’re a part of my charm” he said so sleepily it was almost whole heartedly. As close to it as he could get. And she smiled too, as close to whole heartedly as she could get.

There is one more thing they say about night time, about the witching hour. One thing that they felt absolutely true as they closed their eyes and drowsed into sleep, and focused on their own and each other’s breathing instead of counting sheep. The one last thing about haunting hour is that it is much less frightening and much more bearable when even if you’re not fully asleep nor awake, even if you’re in deep silence, you’re not spending it alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This one shot happened at a one am inspiration strike and in one sitting, no revisions, so I apologize for any grammar/spelling mistake but I know I'm a chicken who will leave things uposted for eternity if I revise.


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